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Project Passion: Inner Goals Over Outer Goals

Inner Goals

One of the reasons that we fail to complete our projects is that we focus on inner goals and not outer goals. Have you ever considered that you might be working on the wrong goal? And, I don’t mean writing a book versus getting a new job.

Heidi Grant Halvorson is a social psychologist who focuses on motivation and communication. From her research she suggests that we all have a default mode for getting things done. Some times this works for us, and some times it doesn’t.

One of the key ideas that we use in Project Passion is the difference between external goals and inner goals – as derived from Heidi’s book Success. It also discussed in Daniel Pink’s best selling book Drive. He talks about the difference between external or extrinsic motivation and internal or intrinsic motivation.

An external goal is what most of us pursue when we want a better job, a new car or to write a book. These are important and often they are not enough. Pink and Halvorson suggest that our focus on external goals is limited. They help us get so far. However, an inner goal will likely take us further.

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